With talks under way again in Quebec City between the student movement and the Quebec government over the university tuition increase, the chatter among pundits this week turned to what happens if the process should fail a second time.

The start of the final sprint in negotiations to settle Quebec’s 16-week tuition battle was delayed Wednesday as Education Minister Michelle Courchesne met with her officials to weigh the impact of various scenarios both the government and the students have put on the table.

ANALYSIS — With talks under way again in Quebec City between the student movement and the Quebec government over the university tuition increase, the chatter among pundits this week turned to what happens if the process should fail a second time.

Even if the mood was upbeat as the parties entered the building where the discussions are taking place, the idea of a summer election to break the impasse has roared back to life.

Rumours have been flying that the government has a Plan B in its pocket that involves calling a snap election as early as this week for a vote on July 9.

The rumours put the opposition Parti Quebecois and Coalition Avenir Quebec on high alert again. The same thing happened this spring, the last time Premier Jean Charest saw a possible window before the student crisis forced him to close it.

“It’s not me who decides the dates of elections, it’s Jean Charest,” junior transport minister Norman MacMillan told reporters in Quebec City. “But if the crisis (is not settled), I think it could be one of the solutions.

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“If the students don’t want to negotiate, what do we do? Are we just going to let this sit?”

PQ leader Pauline Marois had a similar answer.

“It’s up to the government to decide, we don’t decide in its place,” Marois said. “But at some point the public has to decide, and surely the best means in a democracy is an election.”

But before anyone gets too excited, nobody apart from the pundits has mentioned any dates. The idea of a summer vote is sure to turn off a lot of people.

The last time Quebecers were asked to vote provincially in summer was 1952, when an election was held on July 16.

There was a federal election on July 8, 1974, but that, too, is a long way back. Charest can wait until December 2013 before he has to call a vote and he has a lot of things to think about before he launches.

And his presence at the student bargaining table for 50 minutes Monday fuelled the idea that a deal may be close, which would eliminate any election chatter.

Until now, Charest had refused to dive into the talks, leaving his ministers to run the show.

“It’s a new stage,” Charest told reporters. “Everyone wants to turn the page.”

So why would some Liberals be tempted to go now? For one thing, the party has profited politically from the student crisis.

A CROP public opinion poll Saturday again showed the Liberals and PQ locked in a tie. Apparently the PQ has failed to cash in on Quebecers’ discontent, while the Liberals have.

That’s because, despite the clanging of pots and pans in the streets of Montreal, Quebecers outside the cities — where general elections are actually decided — favour the government’s hard line stance.

As one observer said this week, they want the government to show it is in charge of Quebec rather than a bunch of “entitled students,” as a recent Maclean’s magazine cover put it.

Finance Minister Raymond Bachand being pelted with eggs at College Stanislas on Monday by two students is not an image they care to see repeated.

The Liberals might even profit from a summer election because it likely would see low voter turnout, something which usually favours the incumbent.

But some think the unrest Quebec is seeing goes deeper then the tuition increase issue — that it is a generational issue, that youth have abandoned the values of their parents, that a vote could go any way.

If that’s the case, Charest could get more than he bargained for if an election were held now.

Some say the ideal scenario for Charest is to reach a deal with the students, let the dust settle over the summer and take another crack at it in the fall.